Food & Drinks

The last time I went to Sushi Ran in Sausalito, I found it more difficult than before to translate Japanese sushi terms on the menu into plain English (or German). Although I spent quite some time at sushi restaurants over the years, I am challenged from time to time by the terminology. So I decided to create my own little Sushi Guide to help me out.

Over the past few weeks I experimented with chat bot solutions and developed a Sushi Guide Chat Bot in Facebook Messenger to help people translate sushi terms in real time and to provide additional information about the dish if available (It’s still in beta but drop me a direct message if you interested in checking it out).

As usual, one thing led to another and I started looking through some of my restaurant reviews on this site and all the photos I took during sushi restaurant visits all over the world. So I decided to build a companion website, called sushiguide.me, where I will put all of my sushi restaurant reviews in the future. Also I already collaborated with some fellow sushi aficionados and their reviews with be incorporated as well.

Sushi Guide Features

The website provides an overview map with locations of the sushi restaurants I went to over the years and allows the user to drill down and explore the map. Each pin represents a sushi restaurant and provides address information as well as a link to reviews of the restaurant. Since there are sushi places I or my fellow sushi guide team members have visited quite often, there might be several reviews of one particular restaurant.

Sushi Guide – review (responsive)

Sushi Guide – review gallery (responsive)

The reviews contain a general description of the restaurant, information about the menu options and details about the dishes I ordered during the visit with high resolution photos and both Japanese and English terms for the fish. Also each review will incorporate a review score with the categories atmosphere, menu options, food quality, drink variety and service. This rating scheme might evolve over time, but I think it is a good start.

Sushi Guide – Rating Scheme

The website will entails a searchable sushi term glossary with translations of Japanese sushi terms in to plain English. The glossary will be kept as up to date as possible and will definitely include everything I came across over the years. The terms in this glossary will of course be integrated into the Sushi Guide Chat Bot.

During my last trip to San Francisco in early 2017, I once again enjoyed an amazingly awesome omakase style dinner at the sushi bar at Sushi Ran. I have been there a few times and still enjoyed it as much as every time I went there.

Sushi Ran – table setup

First, I started with a moriawase 1o piece sashimi platter with aaa grade big eye tuna, yellowtail, ocean trout, bonito and barracuda at two pieces each. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures.

Omakase Sashimi

I opted for an 11 piece omakase sashimi plate after that and once again I was blown away. It came with uni (deep sea urchin), katsuo (cherrywood smoked bonito tuna), kamasu (barracuda), tennen hamachi (wild yellowtail), aji (horse mackerel), kusshi oyster, hotaru ika (baby firefly squid), kinmedai (golden eye snapper) and buri toro (wild yellowtail belly). This time I took some photos.

I never had black grouper before and liked it very much. The bluefin was also awesome, as was the barracuda. All in all it was as amazing as always.

chu toro medium fatty kindai-tenku blue fin tuna nigiri

toro kindai-tenku blue fin fatty tuna nigiri

mahata black grouper nigiri

kasugodai baby red snapper nigiri

kinmedai golden eye snapper nigiri

kamasu seared barracuda nigiri

buri toro willd yellowtail belly nigiri

satsuma wagyu a5 japanese beef striploin nigiri – kagoshima

shirayaki eel nigiri

unagi nigiri

I will surely be back next time I am in San Francisco.

For some reason I had more issues than usual with Japanese sushi terms and had to ask more than once about the variety of fish I could choose from. A few times I even had to take out my iPhone and look stuff up. That felt rather weird, considering I have been a rather frequent sushi eater. Also, it took far to long to find what I was looking for.

This is why I think I will come up with a chat bot to help me out next time. Wouldn’t you like that?

While staying in Melbourne in February 2017, I stumbled upon ReWine on Queen Victoria Market. It’s a local retail company, selling wine by the glass or in refill bottles directly from the barrel of regional wineries.

ReWine – Reserve Shiraz & Cheese

ReWine

ReWine Bottles

ReWine Barrels

I really like the concept behind this:

“We buy wines that we like direct from wineries in our own tanks and bring them to Melbourne. Usually they’re ready to go. Occasionally, if we feel we can enhance a wine we can blend it and mature it until we’re happy that it’s at its best for you to enjoy. ReWine has wine stored in the barrel at the Queen Victoria Market and our wine bar and shop in Brunswick East. We generally sell in our own refillable glass bottles, but can sell wine in any volume that you can carry home.”

When I lived in Sydney in 2016, I tried a great variety of Australian wines, joined Naked Wines as an Angel and was on a quest to find what I like most. It was not easy at times, especially with Australian white wines. Although I certainly found some great Australian reds and some select whites that I did like, most wine menus left me unsatisfied at times.

At ReWine I enjoyed almost all wines they offered, the Viognier and the Reserve Shiraz being my favorites. With their selection of local cheese it was easy to find a reason to come back several times during my stay for refills.

Again I went to Matsumi some time ago, my absolute favourite Sushi restaurant in Hamburg, Germany. It is located in the Collonaden near to the Jungfernstieg at the inner Alster river and I highly recommend it for the most amazing sushi. I don’t know any better place.

We got seats at the sushi bar and started out with some very nice side dishes and a sake kava temaki (grilled salmon skin hand roll), which is my absolute favourite hand roll at Matsumi. They are a little bit messy to eat but an absolute delight.

sake kava temaki

Afterwards we enjoyed an amazing sashimi platter with a huge variety of delicious fish. We had hamachi (yellowtail), maguro, medium fatty and fatty tuna (I think it was chu toro and toro), sake (salmon), hirame (halibut), ika (squid), tako (octopus), saba (mackerel), perch/zander (I am not sure about the Japanese name), ama ebi (sweet shrimp) and hotategai (scallop), aka gai (red clam) and mirugai (giant clam). To be honest, I am not quite sure about the last two mussels. Alongside the sushi platter there were two more side specialties, spicy ika (squid) and aji tataki (seared horse mackerel).

To make it short, the sashimi was all awesome, fresh and so delicious. I especially enjoyed the 3 varieties of tuna, the hamachi (yellowtail) and tako (octopus). Also I never hat hirame (halibut) at Matsumi before and really liked its smoothness. As always I also appreciated the mackerel, being on my long list of sashimi favourites. Therefore I also really enjoyed the aji tataki (seared horse mackerel) It was refined with herbs, wasabi and soy sauce and was absolutely delicious.

sashimi platter

sake (salmon), fatty tuna, hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi

tuna sashimi: chu toro and maguro

hirame (halibut) sashimi

perch (zander), ama ebi (sweet shrimp) sashimi

hotategai (scallop), aka gai (red clam), mirugai (giant clam) sashimi

ika (squid) sashimi

aji tataki (horse mackerel)

I will be back for more…

P.S.: Sadly, Hideaki Morita, the head chef at Matsumi, fell terribly ill in autumn 2015. I miss him very much and wish him all the best for his recovery. I sincerely hope that he feels much better soon.

While in Miami for New Year’s Eve, I went to Toni’s Sushi Bar in Miami Beach for some Sashimi. As a party of two we went there with no reservation on December 31 2015 and got some nice seats at the sushi bar. It is a small restaurant with 50 seats at the most, centrally located. Operating since 1987, they claim to be the first sushi restaurant in Miami Beach. High Zagat ratings underline the ongoing success of the restaurant.

Sashimi & more

I started out with a grilled salmon skin handroll and opted for a deluxe sashimi platter and worked my way through the menu. I was really amazed by the quality and variety of the fish and the specials they seem to change on a daily basis. The platter came with maguro, hamachi, sake, cobia (which I never had before) and kanpachi. Since they had toro on the specials menu, I couldn’t resist and added some aji and tai. To finish things off, I enjoyed both an unagi and anago as nigiri.

I really enjoyed everything we had and can attest that Toni’s Sushi Bar is indeed great. The veggie tempura, gioza and miso soup was also very good. We enjoyed it so much, that we went a second time on the last day of our trip.

On my trip to San Francisco in October 2015, I had to make my mandatory visit to Sushi Ran, my all time favourite Sushi Restaurant in Sausalito. According to Michael Bauer, it os one of the only 3 places to go for great sushi in the San Francisco Bay Area, leading the list for nearly 3 decades. This time I went twice, this being about the second visit… the most impressive sushi experience so far.

Executive Chef Takatoshi Toshi

We went there a few days before and wanted to build on it, so we decided to go on a Friday night, the last night of our trip. As a group of 3 we were seated at the sushi bar and enjoyed the service of Sushi Ran’s executive chef, Mr. Takatoshi Toshi, their master chef since 2013. He recently won the US national championship title at the Global Sushi Challenge held in Chicago on May 17th 2015 and will represent the US in Tokyo, Japan on November 25th for the World Championship. A short video of Takatoshi Toshi at a Gala Evening in Israel is posted below.

Sashimi Platter

Anyway, on this day we decided to go with an omakase style sashimi menu and basically went from one gourmet explosion to the next. We went with sashimi because a) we don’t like rice that much and b) rice fills you up to quickly. Since we don’t have the change to be there often, we decided we would get the most out of taking everything as sashimi. We started out with a small sashimi platter with 2 pieces of king sake (king salmon), 2 pieces of hamachi (yellowtail), 2 pieces of hon maguro (kindai-tenku blue fin tuna), 2 pieces of ara (red spotted grouper with sea grapes) and 2 kusshi oysters with yuzu jelly. It’s basically the chef choices from seasonal items. It’s safe to say that king salmon, hon maguro and hamachi is most likely to be on the platter, but the chef adds on it with some specialties. We expecially enjoyed the oyster, which seemed a refreshing and not so common addition to the mix.

sashimi platter – king sake (king salmon), hamachi (yellowtail)

sashimi platter – hon maguro (kindai-tenku blue fin tuna)

sashimi platter – ara (red spotted grouper)

sashimi platter – kusshi oyster

Sushi Ran – Executive Chef – Takatoschi Toshi

Sushi Bar Exclusives and more

After that we went to single dish menu style, watching every dish being prepared by Takatoshi Toshi. We kicked it of with kasugodai (baby red snapper cured with bamboo leaf), iwashi (sardine), sagoshi (smoked young Spanish mackerel), kamasu (seared barracuda), kuruma ebi (live Japanese tiger shrimp) and zuke chu toro (red wine cured medium fatty kindai-tenku blue fin tuna). I never had sardine sashimi before and I liked it. Also I really enjoyed the mackerel (for some reason I love mackerel). The tiger shrimp was cooked and peeled just before serving it. Although it was cooled down on ice water it was still warm inside, which made it a very nice dish. I am not too much into shrimp as far as sashimi and nigiri go, but I really enjoyed this one.

Afterwards we tried kaisui uni (deep sea ocean packed sea urchin). It was prepared on a spoon and was incredibly fresh and sweet. Just recently, I had uni enrolled in chu toro tuna at Akiko’s Restaurant, but this uni was even better. If only it was served with toro 😉 … but wait.

After that we hat the most delicious toro (kindai-tenku blue fin fatty tuna), kohada (gizzard shad), fresh sujiko (salmon roe) and shirayaki (fresh water grilled eel with sansho). The fatty tuna almost fell apart when I picked it up and dissolved lovely on the tongue. I never had shad before, it was also very elegant and acute at the same time. The eel was also very nice although I must admit I really love unagi.

Takatoshi Toshi preparing kaisui-uni

kaisui uni sashimi (deep sea ocean packed sea urchin)

toro sashimi (kindai-tenku blue fin fatty tuna)

kohada sashimi (gizzard shad)

sujiko (salmon roe)

shirayaki sashimi (fresh water grilled eel with sansho)

We continued with some amazing tarabagani (king crab with crab butter aioli) served on a spoon. The aioli was delicious and provided a mediterranean twist to the crab. One could easily ask for seconds, but we went on with bincho toro (fresh white fatty tuna), zuke sake (white soy sauce cured fatty salmon) and meso anago (braised young sea eel).

Takatoshi Toshi preparing tarabagani

tarabagani sashimi (king crab with crab butter aioli)

bincho toro sashimi (white fatty tuna)

zuke sake sashimi (white soy sauce cured fatty salmon)

meso anago sashimi (braised young sea eel)

For the last order we chose the tokachi wagyu beef as nigiri (grade A5 Japanese beef spriploin), as we did the last time we were there. It is so delicious and well worth the money and effort put into it.

Takatoshi Toshi preparing tokachi wagyu

tokachi wagyu nigiri (grade A5 Japanese beef spriploin)

Sushi Ran – sushi bar exclusives

It truly was a dinner long to be remembered. The fish was so fresh and tasty, it just blew us away. Since this was our second sitting at Sushi Ran during our trip, it is safe to say that the experience was even better than before. We really enjoyed to talk with Takatoshi Toshi and letting him chose one delicious dish after another. It is hard to believe that there are differences on such a high level of gourmet cuisine, but there sure are.

So whenever you have the chance to go to Sushi Ran, make sure you are sitting at the Sushi bar and take a look at the Sushi Bar Exclusives and hope the Executive Chef is waiting for your order.

During my recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area in October 2015, I had to make my mandatory visit to Sushi Ran, my all time favourite Sushi Restaurant in Sausalito. I have been there quite often over the past 12 years and have written about it many times. My last visit to Sushi Ran was during the WWDC 2014. If you are interested, check it out.

This time around I went twice, this being a short post about the first visit. As a group of 3, we were lucky to get seats at the packed sushi bar at 8 pm on a Sunday.

Sashimi Platter

We started the dinner with some sake based cocktails and a moriawase sashimi platter, made of 10 pieces: 2 pieces of king sake (kings salmon), 2 pieces of Aji (horse mackarel), 2 pieces of hon maguro (kindai-tenku blue fin tuna), 2 pieces of bincho maguro (fresh white tuna) and 2 pieces of hamachi (yellowtail).

Since we mostly had nigiri, we couldn’t take any more although it was truly awesome. This is why we decided to come back for more on our last day. So I’ll be posting more about my Sushi Ran experiences soon.

During my last trip to San Francisco in October 2015, I went to Akiko’s Restaurant again. It is one of my favourite sushi restaurants and is located at 431 Bush St near the Dragon’s Gate to Chinatown in San Francisco. I have been there in 2014, and to make it short, it’s still great.

It is still supposed to be of the very few restaurant that can at all be compared to my all time favourite Sushi Ran in Sausalito, which has been the best for more than 30 years according to Michael Bauer… and I agree. Akiko’s is always well booked, so just as last time we went there despite no seats being available and got squeezed in just after opening at 5 pm with some awesome seats at the sushi bar.

Sashimi Platter

This time I went there with a friend from Germany and we shared an amazing omakase experience, starting off with a great sashimi platter. It was made of 12 pieces: 2 pieces of ji-kinmedai (“cold smoked” golden eye snapper), 2 pieces of unimasu (ocean trout), 2 pieces of isaki (grunt fish), 1 piece of hotate (scallop), 1 piece of mirugai (giant clam), 2 pieces of hamachi suna zuri (yellowtail belly cut) and 2 pieces of mebachi maguro (big-eye tuna).

Omakase Menu

After that we we had some awesome Uni (sea urchin) enrolled in chu toro (medium fatty blue fin tuna). The uni was incredibly fresh and sweet, but the tuna was even better. It melted on the tongue and made this dish a absolute delight long to be remembered. Although we almost passed out after this delicious dish, we had even more according to the check. One should never stop short off bursting, since you don’t come by often, I suppose. Anyway, we continued with Shima Aji (stripped jack, white trevally) sashimi.

After that we switched to nigiri for some reason. Although nigiri is also great it really fills you up with rice, so pretty soon there will be no room for more. But not yet. We tried some awesome Ayu (river trout “sweet fish”) and Kamasu (young barracuda). Since we don’t have sweet fish and barracuda at any restaurant I know at home, it’s always nice to try something different.

For the grand finale we had the most terrific grade A5 Miyazaki Magyu (Japanese Black Cattle) nigiri. It was amazing and was prepared in front of us since we had seats at the sushi bar.

chu toro and uni sashimi (medium fatty blue fin tuna and sea urchin)

shima aji sashimi (stripped jack, white trevally)

ayu nigiri (river trout “sweet fish”)

kamasu nigiri (young barracuda)

a5 miyazaki wagyu (Japanese Black Cattle)

a5 miyazaki wagyu nigiri (Japanese Black Cattle)

What a great dinner and definitely among the best sushi experiences I ever had. But wait for my posts on my 2 visits to Sushi Ran during this trip.